Fringe Festival 2017: "The End of the World Sing-Along Hour"

Summary: A sing-along radio broadcast from the radio home of the resistance is interrupted by an asteroid approaching earth.

Highlights: If the world is ending, we might as well sing! A wonderful premise, but I wanted more from this show. Literally, it was only about 40 minutes long (nothing throws a wrench in my tightly scheduled Fringe life like having 45 minutes between shows). But the cast (Carole Finneran, Eryn Tvete, Jennifer Eckes, Kevin Werner Hohlstein, and playwright Tracey Fletcher Zavadil) and live onstage band are fabulous, and singing songs like "This Land is Your Land" and the originals "Everybody" and "Never Give Up" (written by Tracey) truly does make one feel better about the world. In this show-within-a-show, when news breaks of an asteroid about to hit greater Minnesota (the cabin!), the sing-along cast decides to try to thwart it with song waves - simultaneous singing and kazooing across the country. A cute and fun show, I just wish there were more singing (and less politics)!

Cherry and Spoon

The sculpture "Spoonbridge and Cherry" was created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in 1988 for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center, original site of the Guthrie Theater. I chose "Cherry and Spoon" as the name of this blog because it seems a fitting and recognizable symbol of the Minnesota cultural scene.